Theodore J. St. Antoine (born 1929) is an American lawyer and legal scholar. He has served on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School since 1965 and is currently the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor Emeritus of Law at the school. St. Antoine served as dean of the Law School from 1971 to 1978.
St. Antoine graduated from Fordham College and the University of Michigan Law School. He also spent a year at the University of London as a Fulbright Scholar. He began practicing law in Cleveland and served a tour in the Army JAG Corps before practicing in labor law in Washington, D.C.
St. Antoine is known for his writing in the field of labor relations and labor law. He is active in labor arbitration of union and management disputes, acting as arbitrator in dozens of Major League Baseball arbitration matters, the parties of which have included the league and individual teams, agents, and players, including Curt Schilling, Sandy Alomar Jr., and Darryl Strawberry. St. Antoine served as President of the National Academy of Arbitrators in 1999–2000. St. Antoine was the official draftsperson for the Model Employment Termination Act (META). He also authored a defense of that act, The Model Employment Termination Act: A Fair Compromise published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 1994. [1]
St. Antoine has taught as a visiting faculty member at Cambridge, Duke, George Washington, and Tokyo University, and in Salzburg. In the past few years he has spent a great deal of time teaching labor relations and arbitration in Chinese universities, and speaking about developing labor law in China. [2]
He edited the first and second editions of The Common Law of the Workplace: The Views of Arbitrators. He serves on the internal board of review of the United Automobile Workers, a UAW-constitutional agency that provides redress for aggrieved union members. [3]
Arbitration, in the context of the law of the United States, is a form of alternative dispute resolution. Specifically, arbitration is an alternative to litigation through which the parties to a dispute agree to submit their respective evidence and legal arguments to a neutral third party for resolution. In practice arbitration is generally used as a substitute for litigation, particularly when the judicial process is perceived as too slow, expensive or biased. In some contexts, an arbitrator may be described as an umpire.
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the United States. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 29 states and D.C., and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There is no federal law, and few state laws, requiring paid holidays or paid family leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 creates a limited right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in larger employers. There is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed social security, but the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 requires standards of prudent management and good governance if employers agree to provide pensions, health plans or other benefits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees have a safe system of work.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), founded in 1947, is an independent agency of the United States government, and the nation's largest public agency for dispute resolution and conflict management, providing mediation services and related conflict prevention and resolution services in the private, public, and federal sectors. FMCS is tasked with mediating labor disputes around the country; it provides training and relationship development programs for management and unions as part of its role in promoting labor-management peace and cooperation. The Agency also provides mediation, conflict prevention, and conflict management services outside the labor context for federal agencies and the programs they operate. The FMCS headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. with other offices across the country.
Just cause is a common standard in employment law, as a form of job security. When a person is terminated for just cause, it means that they have been terminated for misconduct, or another sufficient reason. A person terminated for just cause is not entitled to notice or severance and is generally ineligible for unemployment benefits.
An arbitration clause is a clause in a contract that requires the parties to resolve their disputes through an arbitration process. Although such a clause may or may not specify that arbitration occur within a specific jurisdiction, it always binds the parties to a type of resolution outside the courts, and is therefore considered a kind of forum selection clause. It is also known as the "Scott v. Avery clause."
The National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) honorary and professional organization of labor arbitrators in the United States and Canada that was founded in 1947. Its avowed purpose was “to foster the highest standards of integrity, competence, honor and character among those engaged in the arbitration of industrial disputes.” Under the Academy’s stringent rules, only the most active and well-respected practitioners can be elected to membership, along with scholars who have made significant contributions to the field of labor law and relations. The Academy’s roughly 600 members cannot serve as advocates or consultants in labor disputes, associate with firms that perform those functions, or serve as expert witnesses on behalf of labor or management. Their interest is in the betterment of a fair and impartial arbitration process.
The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), was founded in 1947 as the Industrial Relations Research Association. LERA is an organization for professionals in industrial relations and human resources. Headquartered at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the organization has more than 3,000 members at the national level and in its local chapters. LERA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that draws its members from the ranks of academia, management, labor and "neutrals".
Charles J. Morris is professor of law emeritus at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is an internationally renowned labor law scholar and authority on the National Labor Relations Act.
The Hofstra Labor and Employment Law Journal is an American law journal which publishes articles in the field of labor and employment law.
Cynthia Estlund is the Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law.
George W. Taylor was a notable professor of industrial relations at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and is credited with founding the academic field of study known as industrial relations. He served in several capacities in the federal government, most notably as a mediator and arbitrator. During his career, Taylor settled more than 2,000 strikes.
Arnold M. Zack has served as an arbitrator and mediator of labor management disputes since 1957. Born on October 7, 1931, in Lynn Massachusetts, he is a graduate of Tufts College, Yale Law School and the Harvard University Graduate School of Public Administration. He was a Fulbright Scholar, a Wertheim Fellow, President of the National Academy of Arbitrators and member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He served as a judge of the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal and was President of the Tribunal since 2010. He also served and taught as senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program of Harvard Law School and the Harvard Trade Union Program since 1985.
Harry Thomas Edwards, an American jurist and legal scholar, is currently a Senior United States Circuit Judge and chief judge emeritus of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, D.C., and a professor of law at the New York University School of Law.
Seth D. Harris was the 11th United States Deputy Secretary of Labor, and served for six months as the Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor and a member of President Barack Obama's Cabinet. Nominated by President Obama in February 2009, Harris was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in May 2009, and became acting Secretary of Labor following the resignation of Hilda Solis in January 2013. Harris was also a member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation's Board of Directors. Harris stepped down from his post on January 16, 2014. Since leaving the Obama Administration, Harris has been a Visiting Professor at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and a Distinguished Scholar at Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations, and a lawyer in Washington, D.C. Harris also serves on boards of directors and advises early stage companies.
A grievance is a formal complaint that is raised by an employee towards an employer within the workplace. There are many reasons as to why a grievance can be raised, and also many ways to go about dealing with such a scenario. Reasons for filing a grievance in the workplace can be as a result of, but not limited to, a breach of the terms and conditions of an employment contract, raises and promotions, or lack thereof, as well as harassment and employment discrimination.
Robert B. Moberly is Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas School of Law. His scholarship focuses primarily on dispute resolution.
Jean Trepp McKelvey was an American economist specialising in arbitration and industrial relations. McKelvey was an esteemed tenure professor at Sarah Lawrence College (1932–1945) and Cornell University (1946–1976) where at the latter she was a founding faculty member for the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, developing the curriculum and teaching five courses including arbitration, labor law and labor practices. Coined the "mother of arbitration", in 1947 McKelvey was the first woman admitted to the National Academy of Arbitrators, in 1970 became its first woman president and established an arbitration training program for women and minorities. In addition to her successful published research career, McKelvey served on the New York State Board of Mediation (1955–1966) and Federal Services Impasses Panel (1979–1990) and received numerous accolades including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service's Special Award for Distinguished Service in Labor Management Relations (1973) and Arbitrator of the Year Award from the American Arbitration Association (1983).
Mark Gaston Pearce is an American lawyer, arbitrator and university professor who is best known for serving as a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Pearce was designated chairman of the board by President Barack Obama on August 28, 2011, and served as chairman until January 22, 2017. He currently is a visiting professor and the executive director of the Workers' Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center.
Bernard David Meltzer was an American legal scholar who was a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He was a leading scholar on labor law and a drafter of the U.N. Charter.